Some interesting finds at the Boston City Archives

Wednesday morning I decided to speak to Marta about my blogs, what I needed to watch out for and what I needed to do more of. The main thing that she mentioned was making sure I used active over passive voice when writing my blogs. After this, I spent some time going over what I had written and editing. At this point, I’m pretty sure that I have a fair amount of blogs ready to go and writing will be much easier in the coming weeks.

When I went looking for documents this week it looked like I wouldn’t find much this time around at first. I did have the Anthony Burns papers, and Marta gave me a box of election items to look through. In that box there were two pamphlets with articles from women either endorsing Mayor Curley or Fredrick W. Mansfield. Jennie Barron, one of the women I’ve already written about, endorsed Mansfield for mayor.

There were a few very interesting finds this week. The first black man elected to the US Senate after reconstruction came from Massachusetts. Edward Brooke held office from 1967 until 1979, so it took this country over one hundred years to elect an African American to the senate after the Civil War. In the Boston City Archives we have correspondence between him and Mayor John Collins allowing me to write a post on Brooke.

I also spent some time looking through the index of the city’s documents to see if I could find anything worth writing about. I found a document from 1900 about Mrs. Roger Wolcott, who represented the city at the International Congress of Charities in Paris.

There was also as document from 1902 about the death of Mrs. Emma Stone, who came into the hospital with a floating kidney and “hysterical.” She was observed to be very nervous during her stay. During one of those nights, she woke up at midnight and jumped down a flight of stairs fracturing her thigh. After the accident, she started refusing all food and continued to be nervous. She passed away about twenty-one days later. They performed an autopsy on the body, and Emma had multiple tumors throughout her body including the lung, stomach, uterus, and ovaries. I find this really fascinating, because not only did they fail to diagnose her properly but the medical examiner had to be called in to confirm that she died of natural causes and not the thigh fracture. This way the hospital wouldn’t be blamed. I’m really excited to write about women as patients with this as my example.

Before going in next week I need to write a few blogs and do substantial research on what I can find in the archives. Doing an hour of google searching for prominent events and people is not cutting it anymore.

Settling into a Routine at the Boston City Archives

I’ve settled into a routine at the Boston City Archives. I come in, put my things away, and get settled on the computer. I spend the first half of my time editing blog posts I had written and fixing mistakes. When I’m done with that, I create a list of people and documents I can find for them. The second half of my visit is spent looking for those documents and scanning them into the computer.

That’s how this week went. I went through and edited through my posts, fixing them as Marta suggested. Then I went into the back and found multiple documents for new posts. Like last week, this week was pretty great. The first African American woman to practice dentistry in Boston was Dr. Jessie K. Garrett. I managed to find her tax records from 1939. Another woman that I found interesting this week was Wilhelmina Marguerita Crosson, who went to Girls’ High School and was one of the first female African American teachers in Boston. She created Boston’s first remedial reading program and fought for black history education. I feel her blog in particular will be really interesting, mainly because I have both her graduation exercises from high school and her teacher qualifications record.

Like Crosson, Marcella Boveri and Pauline Hopkins both attended Girls’ High School. Marcella Boveri was a biologist and the first woman to graduate from MIT. Pauline Hopkins was an African American writer and part of the Harlem Renaissance. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find their graduation exercises, either because that year was missing or because the exercises weren’t available that far back. On Marta’s suggestion though, I will be posting a blog just on Girls’ High School in particular and writing about famous alumni.

This week wasn’t entirely about women though. Forrester Blanchard Washington graduated from South Boston High School in 1905. Although his work was largely in Detroit, he was also one of the directors in the Federal Emergency Relief Administration during the Great Depression. His work wasn’t in Boston, but he has a Boston connection so I will be posting a short blog about him.

One of the members of the Massachusetts House of Representatives is Russell E. Holmes. I was able to dig up his Hyde Park Year Book from 1987. He was a member of the National Honor Society, captain of the basketball team, and voted Most Likely to Succeed. It’s really cool how if someone went to a Boston high school, there’s a chance I can find them in one of the yearbooks we have in the archives.

I feel as though this week I made a lot of headway for Black History Month. I plan on adding in citations and writing a few blogs before I go in next week. This way, like last time, I have the ability to look for new things more easily during my next visit.

A fruitful week at the Boston City Archives.

During this week, I came into the Boston City Archives and the first thing I did was work on the edits Marta gave me for my blogs. I also began compiling a longer blog about Margaret Sanger and the issues the Boston Public Library had when processing her autobiography. That blog is turning out to be longer than my other ones, because of how much there is in those papers.

I created a list of people that I wanted to look for in the back, and then was able to find a lot of what I was looking for. Rose Kennedy attended Dorchester High School and graduated in 1906. I was able to find her in the graduation exercises from that year. She was listed as being on the honor roll. I also took a look at the school newspaper published that year to see if she was writing for it or on any sports. Unfortunately she wasn’t, but there was two very interesting articles written in the mid 1940s that I’ll probably write blogs about. One asked girls if they think women should serve on a jury, and the other was about dieting.

I found William Monroe Trotter, a newspaper editor and civil rights activist, listed in Hyde Park’s graduation exercises from 1860. At that point, Hyde Park High School was predominantly white, but Trotter managed to do well enough to be valedictorian of his senior class. I also tried looking for Horatio J. Homer in the city records, but have yet to find him. Homer was the first African American on the Boston police force.

I really enjoyed this week. I found a lot more to work with this week than last week. I want to finish up a few blogs before going in the following week. This way like before I can get some new things started much more easily. There are documents related to the Anthony Burns case that I need to look through next week. The Anthony Burns case was one that made a lot of people question the Fugitive Slave Law. I would also really like to find Horatio J. Homer in the archives. I feel as though I am finding my groove, and I am really getting to know where I can find documents in the archives.

Continuing the Search at the Boston City Archives

This week I received my own log-in information for the computers at the Boston City Archives. Marta Crilly, my supervisor, explained that I would be doing all my work using google docs. This way it would be much easier for her to proofread and check my blogs before they get posted online. I managed to finish almost three blogs this week. The ones on Jennie Loitman Barron and a group of schoolgirls from the Franklin School in 1837 are all set. I also have one Julia Harrington Duff that I need to add a document to next week.

Marta also showed me a folder she found on Margaret Sanger, which was about her autobiography. Apparently when it was published, the Boston Public Library got a copy and began processing it, but the book was not put into circulation until years later. Before it could be put on the shelves, someone pulled it thinking that allowing it to be on the shelf would be breaking Massachusetts state law. I find anything to do with censorship really fascinating, so being able to write a blog entry about this is really exciting.

I spent some time trying to locate Rebecca Lee Crumpler’s tax records. She lived in and operated an office in Beacon Hill in 1869, and later on her and her husband moved to Hyde Park in 1880. The tax files were arranged by ward, and after finally locating the ward her street would have been on, I was not able to find her or her husband in the books. I was looking for either her husband’s name, a mention of a black doctor, female doctor, or any combination, but nothing was mentioned. By the time I got to 1876, the wards switched, so I began to hit a dead end. I would like to go back and do another search on a later date.

I did some more searching and wrote down key events that would have centered on abolitionism at Faneuil Hall during the 1800s to continue my work next week. I also continued looking through the 1837, not finding much at all this time around.

Before going in next week, I want to continue my list of events and people. This way, I have an easier time locating documents in the archives. I like the fact that my project here is a bit of a scavenger hunt with the added bonus that I might stumble upon something completely unexpected every week.

Boston City Archives: Week One

I started my internship at the Boston City Archives this past Wednesday. Marta Crilly took me on a tour of the building and then told me about the project I will be working on. My internship is social media based. I will be looking for documents in the archives that have something to do with women or famous African Americans that were either from Boston or happened to do something in Boston in preparation for Women’s History Month and Black History Month. Then, I will be writing blogs and tweets about the person/document, so they can be posted onto the City Archives’ social media accounts.

I spent my first day creating a list of women who either spent a portion of their lives in the Boston area or did something of significance that would connect them to Boston. Then with Marta’s help, I found documents that related to Julia Harrington Duff and Jennie Loitman Barron. Julia Harrington Duff was a teacher who fought for the rights of Irish-American women who wanted to be teachers in Boston when the administration went out of their way to hire women from out of the state instead. I found her teaching record from before she married to. Jennie Loitman Barron was the first woman in Massachusetts to serve as a full-time judge in the municipal court, and she was the first woman appointed to the state superior court. Before she served in Massachusetts courts, she was elected to the Boston School Committee from 1926 to 1929. Her election results showed that she had the second highest number of votes in that year’s election.

I then, began looking through the city’s records from the year 1837 in an attempt to find anything to do with the Grimke sisters or famous abolitionists. I am only a part of the way through those papers, but I looking for the word “anti-slavery” when groups asked to rent Faneuil Hall and the names of famous abolitionists. While looking for those papers, I found a letter a group of schoolgirls wrote to the Boston School Committee when their school wanted to move the girls from the Franklin School to the Johnson School. They argued why this should not happen and thirty-six of them signed their names to the letter petitioning against it. This letter would be really cool to post a blog about, especially since this happened before women had suffrage.

Sylvia Plath was born in Jamaica Plain; she also lived in Boston in 1958 with her husband. The first female African American doctor spent time in Boston as well. Dr. Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler was the only African American woman to graduate from New England Female Medical College and owned a practice on Joy Street in Beacon Hill. I am working on plotting the addresses on maps found at the archives and writing up two separate blog posts on each woman.

I really enjoyed getting started on this project and excited to keep going with it next week.